Making the connections that matter

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Two years into the job, Daniel Reid says he’s still happy he made the choice to become a telecommunications technician for Unified Systems Group in Calgary.

“After high school, I took a year off and wasn’t sure what I wanted to do,” he says. “Then I saw the telecommunications program at SAIT (Southern Alberta Institute of Technology), gave it a try and liked it.”

He especially enjoys the fact the job keeps him out in the field doing hands on work. “I didn’t want to sit behind a computer my whole life. I like getting out there being more active.” Reid also gets in his fair share of travel within the province which he says “keeps it interesting.”

Peter Christoff, general manager for Centre Communications in Vancouver, shares that kind of passion for his work. He says he loves working in the cabling and networking field. Like Reid, it’s the variety and the hands on part of the job he loves. Recently, he led a team of installers who worked on the network cabling at the Vancouver 2010 Olympic Games.

“One of the biggest benefits is the chance to work in different environments and meet new people,” he explains. “It might be in an office building today, a warehouse tomorrow or the Olympics after that.”

A career in telecommunications or networking can take employees in two distinct directions. There are those who work outdoors feeding cables to sites, and there are the local area network (LAN) technicians who work inside buildings to get everything connected.

These types of skills are transferable anywhere in the world, since for the most part, technologies are the same, Christoff says. “You could be part of a big overseas project in Saudi Arabia, on a cruise liner or at the Pentagon — wherever there is a computer, there will be a need for cabling.”

Anyone starting out should first look at what’s available in college training programs, he advises. Once you get the groundwork in place, you can check out additional certification programs through cabling manufacturers and organizations such as Building Industry Consulting Service International (BICSI). “There are many, many courses, from installing to designing to troubleshooting.”

There are all sorts of opportunities for growth. That could mean becoming a crew leader, project manager, estimator, or general manager, or involve a career on the design and support side. Casey Kewais started out as a network technician who took a good part of her training through the Cisco Network Academy and is now a systems engineer with Cisco. She began with some introductory courses while in high school, then decided to get additional accreditation.

“I knew I wanted to get into networking and wanted to move up the ranks to do tech support and coordination work,” she says. “It’s hard to pigeonhole what I do because it’s much everything now.”

Those who love this type of profession tend to be detail-focused and have good people skills, Christoff notes. “You have to work well with other trades and with customers. In other words, you have to like people.”

For installers, it’s also important to be relatively physically fit since a lot of time can be spent climbing ladders, lifting cables and crawling into ceiling spaces.

It’s not all about physical labour however. The job demands an aptitude for learning standards, troubleshooting techniques and problem solving when on site.

Whatever the job trends, there will always be a demand for people to build and maintain telecommunications systems and IT networks, says Darwin Risdon, academic chair in SAIT’s School of Information and Communications Technologies. “A lot of people like spending a good part of their working day out on the road. Some of our graduates in fact work in very remote locations such as the Yukon — and they always have a good cross section of projects to work on.”

For someone like Reid, it’s the love of the job and willingness to learn that matter most. He is currently taking some BICSI courses to add to his resume. “It’s really important to have focus and dedication. You can’t just show up and be ’whatever’. You actually have to have a passion for what you’re doing.”

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